Ends the Raps’ winless streak against Portland?

On Sunday night, the Toronto Raptors host the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team. The visitors arrive in tenth place in the Western Conference, but perform extra weakly away from home: no team from the West has a lower winning percentage in its visiting games.

Toronto Raptors – Statistics & current form

The Raps have been a bit out of sorts lately, after a successful stretch of the season at the beginning of the month with six straight wins, they’ve only managed two wins in their last six games looking back.

However, the drop in the number of wins was also due to a very challenging fixture list. Among others, they played against the first team in the West, Phoenix, or the second team in the East, Miami.

Fred VanVleet, who has already won the “Player of the Week” award in the East this month, continues to perform reliably.

The shooting guard leads the internal rankings in points and assists. In addition, his attempts from outside have been very consistent these weeks. This was also true in the only meeting of the season so far with Portland last November, when he successfully sent half of his eight attempts through the trap.

Portland Trail Blazers – Statistics & current form

As mentioned at the beginning, the Portland Trail Blazers are a welcome guest in the NBA. They have only won five of their 20 away games. Currently they have to do without their sharpest weapon in the attack in the person of Damian Lillard.

The excellent sharpshooter from downtown will be absent for a long time due to an operation on his abdomen. This, of course, diminishes the Trail Blazers’ prospects with regard to their desired participation in the Postseson. At least, however, CJ McCollum has recently become available again.

The shooting guard looked absolutely fit in his comeback after missing 18 games due to a collapsed lung a few days ago. In the game against Miami he scored 24 points straight away and McCollum repeated this performance in the last game against Boston as well.

Toronto Raptors – Portland Trail Blazers Tip

For the game between the Toronto Raptors and Portland Trail Blazers, the prediction includes more than 31.5 points, assists and rebounds by Jusuf Nurkic on the part of the visitors.

With Damian Lillard out of action, the Bosnian centre is now in greater demand on the offensive end and the 27-year-old is delivering: Nurkic is averaging 17.5 points in the current month.

In addition, he is currently particularly strong in rebounding. Nurkic averaged 13.6 boards in January and there are only eight players league-wide who top his seasonal value of 10.8 per game! In addition, he has recently become more of a playmaker, as shown by his increasing number of assists.